varied diet

[Andrew Ferguson]

I'm nervous about feeding wild caught Insects too, So I've started to breed Dubai Roaches as a supplement to the crickets etc....

I haven't tried any with the T's yet though, I thought I would wait until the roaches were "breeding like gooduns".

It's not something I practise on a large scale. Its just the occasional critter every now and again. They go into a "quarantine" for a week fed on clean vegetation and clean water. And I don't choose anything that would pose a threat. Hence the reason the Devils Coach Horse beetle wasn't offered. But that's where common sense comes into it. I saw it was large and had large mandibles, and that sent the alarm bells ringing. A quick Google found all the info I needed. And would you put this in with your little sub adult? http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?im...GB286%26sa%3DN
98.99% of the time, my B. smithi is fed on crickets.

[Nicola Dolby]

Try brown crickets, green crickets, giant brown crickets, meal worms, neighbour's cats......As long as its nutritious really!

[Steve McIntyre]

Occasionally, I offer all mine some delicious cream cakes, which, strangely enough, they refuse... so I end up eating them all as I don't like to waste food. I have also fed them on pieces of beef heart, cubed, previously frozen then thawed. This is placed on a milk carton top and if not eaten by the T in 24 hours, removed and binned! As previously said, this should be done maybe once a month or even less!

[James Box]

lol Steve...strangely enough mine don't like sweets either, so i have to eat them!
i haven't really tried the meat thing properly yet, should do one day, just for a change. but yeah not that frequently.

Andrew, if you know that area to be pesticide free, and you're taking care, you're probably doing ok!
i guess even the slight possibility of poisoning the tarantulas makes us all a bit more cautious about wild caught food...but you know the risks and are doing your best, so that's cool...
for that matter, buying crickets from shops, i keep getting Phorid flies in with them! so you may be avoiding that danger to some degree!

[Chris Sainsbury]

I feed my larger species adult rats when they are mated with great success. Tarantulas such as the ones in the Theraphosa, Lasiodora, Acanthoscurria, Citharischius and Cyriopagopus genus' are the ones i give the rats too.
However, I must state that i feed them only adult rats when gravid, and I feed maybe one rat per spid per month, maximum.
Hope this is of interest to someone

Hi Oli
How much of the rat is left over each month? And from your mated females that you have fed one adult rat a month to, any gone on to do a fertile eggsac?

BTW we are talking about species from the Rattus genus or? Only I find this a very big meal for any tarantula even once in it's life time let alone once a month ,especially when you consider rats normally have a body size of over 5"!
All the best
Chris

oh almost forgot:-
Cockroaches, Crix (black & brown), pinky maggots, and the odd wax worm if I am stuck.......that is when I can be botherd to feed them!

[Alexander Abrams]

I find that brown crickets plus wax and meal worms seem to be fine. All easy to get from the shop and no mess. The T's seem to jump on them fine.

Alex.

[Lee Hoggarth]

i have given her some crickets and a couple of wax worms this past week. When she eats the wax worms she catches them and wherever she is she just stands there and eats them, but when she gets a cricket she turns around on the spot and does a few circles of web, is this usual, any reasons why the crickets and not the wax worms or just a coincidence.

[Clinton Hogben]

some have tried small cubes of fresh meat...and apparently the T's have taken it.

Hi All
My L para will eat fresh steak ( piccy attached ) just a 1-1.5 inch cube every couple of months but I believe its not as nutritious as crickets / locust in a balanced diet sort of way just high in protien

its also messy with all that digestion outside the body you need to keep an eye on the substrata for leftover fats etc